Hi, so I am planing a new story which should take place in a small city in the middle of the woods in northern Canada near Indian reservation.
And as being from central Europe I must confess I do not fully understand the police system in USA and Canada.
Basically my main love interest should be the local police officer/sherif in this small city and he should be responsible also for solving crime in the nearby Indian reservation.
But I want to be sure that Sherif has such a responsibility to not write some nonsense.
So basically my question is - can I say my main love interest is Sherif?
Or is he an officer?
Or can he be the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer even it is just a local police department?
Basically, the RCMP act as the federal police and enforce federal laws. But depending on where, they may be contracted to act as the local police in some areas of the country.
There is no sheriff.
Either. It depends on where and what agreement they have.
Different parts of the country are different.
But, it’s possible that a First Nations has their own police service or they may have RCMP or they may split different duties.
Either way, they are officers. I want to say that most RCMP who would be working in the field would be of the rank of a constable. And they would be named that way.
The RCMP are our federal police, roughly equivalent to the USA’s FBI, ATF, and Federal Marshalls all rolled into one.
In many smaller communities in many provinces, the RCMP are the only police around if the local populace doesn’t have the tax base to support their own civic police force.
There are provincial police, but not everywhere. They’re the ones you’ll see patrolling the highways. In my town the highway divides the city. While on the highway, it’s OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) jurisdiction, but cross the street and it’s City of Stratford Police jurisdiction. And bigger towns will have - or share police forces, as ours does with St. Marys and a few others.
But in the context of the story, for the area you’re describing, it would likely be an RCMP.
Their website is here:
There are detachments, often comprised of only two constables, who serve as community police in First Nations communities.
You can use this link to find the nearest RCMP Detachment to the area you’re setting your story:
Or is he an officer?
He’d typically be a “constable”.
A caution, however:
The RCMP-First Nations relationship has been (and continue to be), at best, problematic, and at worst, genocidal. Think of the treatment of African-Americans at the hands of the US police that you’ve seen in the news; It’s much like that.
Not to say they’re all as bad as that, but there is a lot of mistrust and antipathy from a lot of bad history.
That being said, for the purpose of your story, the love interest could be The One Good Cop who’s earnestly trying to do right by the people he serves. And maybe he’s also been assigned a First Nations partner to help with the investigation to smooth things over.
ok great. I am not going to write about specific place and specific reserve so it is enoug that he can be responsible for both in some parts of the country.
That is really sad… but regarding what I want to write this might be an interesting point. While he is a good cop I might diplay this mistrust. It actually fits weel my story because MC has herself big mistrust to police (for different reson) - so this migh add interesting line to the story.
There are two main models of police service delivery:
Self-administered agreements (used when a First Nation or Inuit community manages its own, unique police force under provincial regulations and legislation)
Yes, the history is not a pleasant one and it continues to this day.
Which is why they have started First Nations Police in some areas to provide greater sensitivity to those issues. They all have different names, depending on where they are located.
But, I like your storyline. The mistrust is strong and deeply rooted.
I just wanted to chime in to say that in Canada we don’t use “Indian” in regards to our Indigenous populations, except in legal and government documents (ie. The Indian Act). We also don’t use Native. We would refer to them as either Indigenous or First Nations, so it would be more authentic to call it a First Nations reserve in your story!
The best known RCMP uniform is the parade formal uniform, known also as the Red Serge is not the same as the duty uniform:
Red Serge
The Red Serge refers to the jacket of the dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It consists of a scarlet British-style military pattern tunic, complete with a high-neck collar and blue breeches with yellow stripe identifying a cavalry history.
You won’t commonly see these out and about, except at special functions and of course, The Musical Ride.
THIS is the typical duty uniform of the RCMP, as you’ll note, pretty much the same as most other police duty uniforms with exception of the insignia:
Here’s a map of the Indigenous Peoples / First Nations of Canada (and some USA)
If you want to create a fictional community, you may also want to invent a fictional First Nations peoples that live in it, but base it on something close to the region it’s in. Search for the name of the First Nations community and there may be resources on local culture, traditions, population, and even languages. (Although, thanks to the accursed Residential Schools System, and forced assimilation, many of these languages have been all but lost.)
